January 12, 2023

To: Members of the American Economic Association
From: Peter L. Rousseau, Secretary-Treasurer
Subject: AEA Awards Announced at the 2023 ASSA Meeting in New Orleans

The American Economic Association is proud to announce the recipients of the following honors and awards. These awards were included in the AEA Awards Ceremony on January 7, 2023, during the ASSA Annual Meeting.

The inaugural recipient of the AEA Distinguished Service Award is Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter, Vanderbilt University. Professor Carpenter is the E. Bronson Ingram University Distinguished Professor of Economics and Health Policy at Vanderbilt, Director of its Program in Public Policy Studies, and the Founder and Director of Vanderbilt’s LGBTQ+ Policy Lab. Amongst many other roles, he is Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the AEA’s Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession (CSQIEP). Professor Carpenter has published widely on the effects of legal same-sex marriage, the causes and consequences of youth substance use, and the effects of public policies on health behaviors such as bicycle helmet use, seatbelt use, smoking, cancer screening, and vaccination. His research has been continuously supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Cancer Society. Professor Carpenter’s colleagues, students, and the profession at large hold him in high esteem for his selfless and persistent efforts to foster a welcoming environment for all economists and others aspiring to join our ranks. Visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/distinguished-service-award for more information.

The inaugural recipient of the AEA Distinguished Economic Education Award is Charles (Charlie) A. Holt, University of Virginia. Professor Holt has served on the UVA faculty since 1989. He is a renowned experimental economist who has made significant contributions to economic education through the development of experiments for the economics classroom. He tirelessly promotes the use of experiments and provides resources that enable other economic educators to adopt this pedagogical technique. He has published numerous articles on experiments for face-to-face classroom use and he created and maintains VeconLab, an online interface for running experiments. Visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/distinguished-economic-education-award for more information.

The winners of the 2022 AEA Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion are the Department of Economics at Carleton College, the Department of Economics at Georgia State University, and the Department of Economics at Howard University. The award recognizes departments and organizations for outstanding achievement in diversity and inclusion practices. The steps taken by each of these departments to create a more welcoming environment for faculty and students align with the AEA's Best Practices for Economists Building a More Diverse, Inclusive, and Productive Profession. For more information and to read the applications, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/outstanding-achieve-diversity-inclusion.

The 2022 AEA Departmental Seed Grant for Innovation in Diversity and Inclusion was awarded to the Department of Economics at Florida International University. The $5,000 grant will support the creation of a new course to appeal to students from a wider variety of backgrounds, the financing of student economic conference attendance, and the funding of research opportunities for URM students, among other inclusivity initiatives. For more information, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/csmgep/diversity-initiatives/dept-seed-grants.

The 2022 Professional Development Grant for URM Economists is awarded to a junior URM economist based on an essay on how their research relates to economics education. The $2,000 grant is awarded to Amy Eremionkhale from Georgia State University, who described how she uses computational social science to pursue topics from economic pedagogy to health to racial inequality. The AEA is proud to partner with Pearson Education on this important initiative. For more information, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/csmgep/diversity-initiatives/urm-professional-development-grant.

The Andrew Brimmer Undergraduate Essay Prize winner for 2022 is a cohort of students in the Emerson Prison Initiative (EPI) program at MCI-Concord. Their essay “Incarcerated Black Americans: The Forgotten Unemployed” discusses why the US unemployment rate inaccurately captures the economic status of Black Americans given that incarcerated individuals are not included in the measure. The Association recognizes these students for their achievement with a $1,000 prize from an anonymous donor to the EPI program.  For more information about the EPI program at Emerson College, visit https://emerson.edu/epi. For more information about the essay prize, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards/brimmer-undergrad-essay-prize.

The recipients of the 2022 CSQIEP Award for Outstanding Research Paper in LGBTQ+ Economics are Mike Martell, Bard College, and Ian Burn, University of Liverpool, for their paper entitled “Gender typicality and sexual minority labour market differentials.” This award is given for the best published economics research paper in LGBTQ+ Economics. For more information, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/aealgbtq/csqiep-award.

The 2022 Carolyn Shaw Bell Award recipient is Martha Bailey, University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Bailey’s research focuses on issues in labor economics, demography, and health in the United States, within the long-run perspective of economic history. For more information about the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award and for the full prize announcement, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/cswep/awards/bell.

The recipient of the 2022 Elaine Bennett Research Prize is Rebecca Diamond, Stanford University. Professor Diamond’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of housing regulations, geographic segregation of households, and local labor market inequality. Established in 1998, the Elaine Bennett Research Prize recognizes and honors outstanding research in any field of economics by a woman not more than seven years beyond her Ph.D. For more information about the Elaine Bennett Research Prize and for the full prize announcement, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/committees/cswep/awards/bennett.

In addition to the above awards, the 2022 John Bates Clark Medalist Oleg Itskhoki, Distinguished Fellows Sadie T. M. Alexander, Barry Eichengreen, James Poterba, and Carmen Reinhart, Foreign Honorary Members Oriana Bandiera, Luigi Guiso, Paul Klemperer, and John Van Reenan, and the AEJ Best Paper Award winners were recognized. These awards are announced in April as part of the Spring awards cycle. Visit https://www.aeaweb.org/news/press-release-awards-2022 for the announcement of these awards.

Please join the AEA in congratulating all of these winners for their contributions to the economics profession. To view the 2023 AEA Awards ceremony in its entirety, visit AEA 2023 Awards Ceremony. For more information on these awards and others, visit https://www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/honors-awards.